ideas, ideas, ideas

well, we have been spending a lot of time throwing around ideas for the remodel. we have gotten to a pretty solid design plan in place.

kitchen
here, we plan to knock down both walls that separates the kitchen from the dining and family rooms. we also will expand the kitchen footprint into the dining room as we need more space.
in addition, we'll move the stove farther away from the wall so that someone can stand at the main sink and use it, and another can use the stove. we moved the fridge to the wall of the house and into the dining room space. finally, an island will be added with a prep sink and some room for chairs for people to sit/eat/work at.

dining room
other than moving some of the kitchen into this space, we plan to eliminate the wall which creates the hall in the middle of the house. we can then have a dining table facing north-south rather than the current east-west configuration we have to do. this will allow us to better utilize the space, especially since we're giving up about 1/3 of the space to the kitchen.

foyer
Gerard really wants to raise the ceiling so the entry incorporates the light from the dormer window, which currently only pokes into the attic. we'll also move the door farther out so we have more room inside the entrance. we will add a small closet and also expand the entrance from the foyer to the living room.

family room
back here, the major change is the back wall will now have a 4-panel sliding glass door. we'll elminate the chimney and window, and also true up the wall that separates the family room from the rear bath & laundry. this wall will be flush with the rest of the wall running east-west in most of the house, rather than poking a few inches into the family room.

other
the rear bath and laundry will disappear. in its place will go a 3rd bedroom, and we will then move the rear bath to be adjacent to the family room. this means we will have to take out 1 closet in the master bath. not a problem, since we decided to then convert the other closet to a walk-in so julie & i both still have storage space.
also, we decided it would be cheaper to rip out all the existing flooring and completely replace it. since we're making so many changes to the layout, it's just easier to start fresh than to try to refinish part of the floors, and anyway we'll need to redo the family room and master BR floors. we'll now go to a fully bamboo flooring, but will probably use different schemes in parts of the house.